


When We Collide

by yueliangs_wonderland



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - CEO, Alternate Universe - College/University, Ambiguous/Open Ending, CEO Hong Jisoo | Joshua, F/M, Reader-Insert, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yueliangs_wonderland/pseuds/yueliangs_wonderland
Summary: Hello! I wrote this because I was feeling angsty and wanted to highlight some behaviors that are romanticized and glorified and should not be! Please if you have issues with someone talk to them about it!
Relationships: Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Reader
Kudos: 3





	When We Collide

**Author's Note:**

> This was cross posted on my tumblr account! Thank you to my mom @nctatnightnight for being my beta reader

You liked listening to Joshua Hong begging for you, more specifically for your assistance. The desperation in his velvety voice, the pout of his pretty pink lips, the wetness of those catlike eyes. Absolutely delicious. Any more desperate and he would be writhing under your cute black kitten heels. 

"And just why should I help you?" 

"Oh come the fuck on, you know why." It's half of a whine and half of a growl and it almost makes you shiver.

"Okay, maybe I'm crazy but did I just hear you say that aloud?" You narrow your eyes at him. 

Joshua is on the very precipice of losing his shit, falling over the edge into anger. And Joshua Hong is a very patient man, it seemed you were the only one who could ever get him like this. You reveled in the idea that on your word and your word alone his very sanity hung in the balance. Good, he sure as hell deserved it. 

You hated Joshua Hong with a stern bitterness that left a nasty taste in your mouth whenever you looked at him. It hadn’t even always been like this, but when he started to change so did your feelings for him. 

In college you too were close, albeit not nearly as close as he and Jeonghan but close enough in your own right. You two were proverbially glued to the hip until he switched into his business major, but he hadn’t started to change until senior year. He’d been working dutifully on his start up project and the many hours you used to spend together would dwindle to minutes, then seconds, and finally only passing glances of tired smiles in between lectures or study groups. Joshua didn’t even show up to group outings with the rest of you anymore. Jeonghan and Vernon had tried to make excuses every time but even they stopped trying to justify his absences and eventually Joshua was nothing more than a small blip on everyone's radar. This was the first time the image of him turned rancid in your mind. 

You had witnessed Joshua’s character development in his college years along with the rest of them, the shy freshman who came straight from Church choir practices into a much more outgoing sophomore, then a funny charismatic leader and finally into someone who flaked on his friends. Did he ever even consider you all friends? You knew switching majors would be hard for him especially in his third year, he had so much to make up but if you knew Joshua Hong you knew that his intelligence and patience would make up for any momentum that he lacked. Maybe it was your fault, you had encouraged him to go for it and in doing so encouraged the downfall of your relationship. 

After everyone graduated and Joshua really got his startup up off the ground he had tried to weasle himself back into your lives, and everyone welcomed him with open arms. Well, everyone save for you. It seemed you were the only one that remembered his betrayal, the only one that felt your blood boil every time he talked about his business ventures and traveling around the world. He had tried so desperately to talk to you one on one but you had successfully thwarted off his advances at catching up time and time again. You, the person he has always held so dear, you, who he felt knew him the most intimately. You who he wanted by his side the most, who he tried to be the best he could be for. He had thought there had always been an unspoken attraction and tenderness between the two of you, but maybe he was wrong, maybe it was just him. Joshua wasn’t sure why there was deep set contempt in the depths of your eyes when you looked at him. Especially not when he had loved you so dutifully, so gently.

There is something distinctly venomous about someone who is generally in a caring and kind disposition being cold to you that makes it feel all the more malicious and cruel. Even more painful is it when it is the person you would lay your life down for. Words that were normally displeasing became heated bullets firing one after the other; scorching, heavy, and stone solid in their weight. Every single time you spoke to Joshua your words were laden with a potent distaste he had no idea you even had in you, you had always been so soft and warm with him. He now knew what it meant to scorn someone who was kind, if only he knew what he had done. 

This continued on for years until the present, the iciness of winter melting into the rebirth of spring to the solid wall of heat that was summer into the cool refuge of autumn four times over. The relationship between the two of you only became worse with the passage of time, the minimal group outings you all had with him always ended with a scathing remark from you towards him. He grew to expect the animosity, and deemed that maybe you hating him was ultimately better than not speaking to him at all. He had put up with it for so so long, trying to get back in your good graces in the best ways he knew how but all his plans backfired. Joshua was floundering in his relationship with you and subsequently all of his friends. He felt it, every time he saw one of you he felt it. 

The tension was always bubbling in the air, so frustratingly out of reach but so real and tangible he could taste it like arsenic in his mouth. In this moment, Joshua sits across from you as you glare at him without any regard to his feelings. He thinks he can finally reach up and grab it. If atmospheres could be seen this one would be as thick and as black as any bottomless abyss. The wait of words not said heavy and suffocating. Hearts beating slow, breath easing in and out in silent whistles of timidness and the reluctance can be the vile taste on their tongues. No one ever wants to speak of how heavy bad things are, because if it is spoken it is real. No one ever wants to be seen as a villain and so they do not speak in this instance, because if they speak it they are real. But you have to say it because this is not a movie, it is not a book and you and Joshua are oh, so real. 

“You’re one of them.” 

There's a pain in both of your chests, hearts writhing in agony at the words you spit out in your frustration. You didn’t like sitting here in this stupid big office in this stupid comfy chair with his stupid presence. 

“You take that back right now (Y/N).” 

His eyes are hard and set and finally you see a semblance of the man you used to know, used to love. 

“No. You don’t get to tell me what to do, I am not one of your lackies. You’re an absolute greedy piece of shit.” You stand from your comfortable perch right after you say it but he stands with you, eyes just as defiant. 

“I said, Take. It. Back.” He reiterates, spite leaking into every punctuated syllable. 

“You asked me for my honesty Mr. Hong, so I gave it to you. Now if you’ll excus-”

“Explain it to me then.” 

“What?” You’re sure you give him a dumb look but he just swallows, you can tell by the way his adams apple bobs and he fixes you with another glare. 

“I said explain.” 

You have to laugh at that. What was there for you to even explain? If he hadn’t gotten it by now he never would. But, you indulge him anyway. 

“You think your cute little attempts at flaunting your wealth over us is welcomed? Do you think your never changing ‘gentlemanly’ act is wanted? We know you so much better than that.” Your words cut at him like razor blades, sharp and serrated and leaving trails of stinging hatred in their wake. 

“What? All I’ve ever done was-”

“Was constantly paid for everything? You never show interest in our group activities and when you do come you treat us like children. ‘Oh you don’t have enough money for this? Let me help you.’ ‘This bill is way too high! Let me pay it.’ ‘I saw you looking at this but it’s so expensive! Let me get it for you!’ Do you know how tiring it is to constantly be coddled? To constantly be reminded that no matter what we do we most likely will never have a sliver of the wealth you do? You’re rich, that’s good for you but some of us like to work hard and save up for the things we want! Some of us like pooling our money together and paying for an extravagant meal! It makes us feel good to know we can have some luxuries, it reminds us of just how hard we’ve worked!”

Your voice was loud now, biting and steadily shoving into his chest pushing him back down to his seat. 

“But I-”

“And the way you act towards us all? We’re supposed to be your friends but you don’t come to us with anything! You don’t tell us when you’re tired, you don’t tell us when you’re hungry, you don’t tell us when you’re hurting! You haven’t for six whole years! You faded out of our lives then thought you could waltz back in like nothing happened! Like you hadn’t discarded us for your fame and success. You think you’re lonely Joshua? You think you’ve been ostracized by us? Have you ever stopped to think for a single second that you did it to yourself? That in your clamoring for acceptance you pushed away the only people who accepted you before you had money?” Your chest heaves, face hot with the admission of your feelings. 

Finally it dawns on Joshua that the emotions he had mistaken for hatred in your eyes for all these years hadn’t been hatred at all, but pain. An unmistakable hurt that could only be left by someone you thought the world of. You had thought the world of Joshua Hong and he had let it slip between his palms to land directly on your chest. 

His mind is too clouded to notice the way you spit out fuck you into the clean air of his office and turn on your heels. It was hours before he looked up, the sun was starting to set, making the sky a pretty palette of pinks, oranges, and purples. The echo of your footfalls that had long since gone in the recess of his mind, the air still smelled faintly of your scent and it drove him right back to the brink of insanity.

Joshua Hong was very tired, and very very lonely. The only words of comfort to him were the ones you left swirling in the air before you left him to sit there in a worn out slump. 

☆☆☆☆

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you to talk to her.” Jeonghan speaks to Joshua over the edge of his crystal shot glass, eyes burning into him like the taste of soju burned down their throats. Joshua was another bottle away from being absolutely shit faced. The ambience of the bar leads them into a false sense of comfort, the billowing streams of smoke from ashtrays and smells of cheap booze lingering in the air as they relaxed into the uncomfortable steele of the bar stools. The Tipsy Fox wasn’t the most savory of establishments, the lights were always so dim you could barely make out your own hands if they weren’t five inches away from your face, though the bathrooms were always modestly clean they wouldn’t be that way for very long, it didn’t have a no smoking policy so the air was always thick with the smell of tobacco amongst other things-never mind the fact it was always humid. 

In plain words; not fit for a billionaire. Not that Joshua had really cared about his image much after the conversation the two of you had. It had been nearly a month by now and though Vernon and Jeonghan had offered solace in their company they had definitely relayed that they most definitely had the same ill feelings though not quite as intense as you. He confronted (or more like cried to) everyone else later that night after your conversation and it left his soul feeling weary. Woozi and Minghao had chided him and when they listened to his reasoning they had asked if he had even listened to your words. They were not as forgiving as Jeonghan and Vernon (especially Minghao, who was what seemed to be your new best friend? When had that even happened?) but not nearly as stingy as you had been.

Over the course of the month there were some hard feelings and some disagreements but nothing that wasn’t able to be ironed out with long open-minded conversations. Finally everyone had come to the agreement that if he worked harder at just being present in general then it might restore the friendships much faster. They were so patient and so willing to speak with him he felt like you had completely blind sided him. He flip flopped between understanding the logic behind your ill feelings towards him and not getting how you could be so uncompromising when everyone else was. The latter was what he was feeling at the moment confiding in Jeonghan. 

“I just don’t understand Han, how do I fix it if (Y/N) won’t let me?” 

There’s a few beats of silence before Jeonghan sighs and pours each of them another shot. Joshua downs it as soon as it’s filled and Jeonghan sucks his teeth. He made a mental note to not pour anymore drinks for him. 

“Shua, you’re both going to drive me insane. Why can’t you two just talk to each other like adults instead of putting me in the middle of it?” The question is more rhetorical than anything else as he mutters it to himself but Joshua still hears him, a faint sparkle lights up his brown eyes. 

“She talked to you about me?” 

Jeonghan shifts back in his seat and gives his friend a long hard look. The dim lighting only made the bags under his eyes appear darker but he still looked good, Joshua always looked nice. His eyes shift past Joshua to your visage which draws more than just his glance as you walk into the dingy bar. 

Even for a normal person you'd look like a mirage, silky green dress hugging your frame like a dream and face made up in a natural look. You carry yourself with an air of confidence that you've hardly ever done. Jeonghan could tell you were more than feeling yourself tonight. 

It doesn't take Joshua long to catch the way Jeonghan was no longer paying attention to him so he turns to the direction his friend is looking and he swears his heart almost falls out his ass. You have finally crossed the bar to them and for a second Josh forgets all the years and pain and thinks you'll be settling in next to him for a long conversation about whatever for however long. Even with you wearing the color he most despised you look simply ravishing. His face heats up, feeling absolutely touch starved as he takes in the way your hand curls around your glass after getting your drink. How long has he been staring that you've had enough time to order and receive it? 

“You know, it’s impolite to stare.” You don’t spare him a glance, instead sipping the cool drink from the glass in your hand. 

“How can I not when you’re so pretty?” You stop, glass half way raised to your lips with the feeling of fire etched beneath your skin. 

“I am so sorry, he’s really drunk right n-”

“I’m not drunk, I just thought she should know.” 

Jeonghan was trying to fix it, and had Joshua just let him there wouldn’t be this weird tension hanging in the air. They watch as you finish bringing your drink to your lips and take a large gulp before placing it on the polished wood to look at Joshua. 

Again, you don’t exchange words but you do take him in wholly. From the disheveled look of his silky cream colored button down (that had three buttons undone), to the messiness of his blue hair he was currently carding his hand through, to the faint flush on his cheeks, the way his black slacks fit his thighs, all the way to his eyes- brown and full of so much unspoken you had a feeling if you let the words fall out of his lips they would tumble around for hours. Yes, Joshua Hong was a sight. Ethereal sitting in an old bar while lighting the place up, you wondered if he felt the hungry stares from everyone else. For a moment you forgot all the ill feelings, feeling just as hungry as they looked. 

You finish your drink before standing with a sigh. 

“Come on, you need to sober up...before you do something stupid.” 

Jeonghan and Joshua blink at you before the former tries to suppress a smile, he fails miserably. 

The Tipsy Fox isn’t the most savory of establishments but it leads to a long night of you three eating hangover soup together as Jeonghan tells really bad jokes to get everyone to laugh. And when it is finally over after the sun begins to peak it’s head over the top of the horizon and you are alone in your bed with a full tummy you think about how it reminds you of the past. You wouldn’t admit it out loud but it feels so good your heart melts and feels a lot less frozen. You really wish you could hate Joshua Hong. 

The next time you two meet it’s been a week since your heart has begun to thaw and you weren’t expecting to see him here at all, had you been you definitely would be wearing something much more flattering. But the more important thing was, how had he even remembered this old place? An old run of the mill rinky dink bookstore surely could’ve been easily forgotten by someone who probably didn’t even have time to read books anymore. Did he have time to read books anymore? Is that why he never had time to speak to any of you? 

“I didn’t expect to see you here.” Josh flashes you a warm smile that makes that fire ignite under your skin again.

He couldn’t have come at a worst time, here you are sat on a stool (courtesy of the store owner) in leggings and an oversized sweater with a copy of Song of Solomon perched between your fingers. In an effort to look uninterested in his presence you languidly run your gaze up and down his body before looking back at the pages. Hopefully the sweat on your palms wouldn’t make the hardcover slip right from between them. Was this always the effect he had on you or had it just been because of that spark you felt a week ago?

“That makes two of us.”

“Toni Morrison is a good author.” 

You have to pick your head up to look at him not expecting the two of you to talk over each other, a wave of confusion crossing over your features. Joshua on the other hand just laughs, he wears that particular shade of mirth well. It makes your stomach churn. 

“You weren’t expecting me to be here either?”

“She is a good author.” 

You crinkle your nose and Joshua laughs even harder. His laughter warms up the quiet store in a way that has the owner popping her head in the aisle with a small smile of her own. An old woman much older looking now than she was when the two of you were still in college. Back then things had been much easier, and the hole in the wall bookstore was a safe haven even when you didn’t need to study and the library was packed. The two of you had just happened upon it on a random late afternoon walk and it had quickly become your place. A little pocket of normalcy in the chaos of campus life, a place that when you stepped in felt as though space and time was at a stand still. 

Now, Joshua sits across from you at the small table the two of you used to use to study waiting for your tea to cool as the old woman talks your ear off about how Joshua had been a faithful regular and even bought the property when she had been in danger of losing it all. She doesn’t leave until your cup is finished and Joshua has nearly melted into the cushy chair beneath him. You stare at him for a while before you say anything again. 

“You remembered?” 

You remember telling Joshua once that you would love it if the two of you could buy it from the old woman one day so you could run it in your old age. He had agreed heartily but you were sure it was just from the mixture of exhaustion and alcohol the two of you consumed. It was only a passing comment though you had definitely meant every word of it. 

“I remember everything about you.” 

You bristle at the comment, how could he say something like that so nonchalant and act as if he hadn’t? 

“You don’t mean that.” 

He takes a long sip of his tea and takes his time setting down the porcelain. The look he gives you is a mixture of sad and weary and you almost wish you hadn’t said it. Normal people would have sighed or shown any form of displeasure, but not Joshua Hong. He sits with you and stares with a level amount of patience that makes you itch. 

“How could I ever forget something important to someone I love?” 

“You don’t-”

“Please, I’ve always loved you. Do you think I’d be sitting here if I didn’t? You may not believe me but I’ve always told you in my own way, though I’m not very good with those words.” 

You swallow thickly feeling like a piece of cotton is lodged in your throat and won’t move. This was not something you were prepared to do today. 

“The way you expressed your pain wasn’t very healthy but the way I dealt with my career wasn’t very healthy either. Shutting each other out and not talking hasn’t been working for the last six years, so can we try something different?” 

His voice is pleading, forcing you to look into his eyes. Had you made him look like that? Did you look the same? You could feel the wet stinging at the corners of your eyes now, threatening to spill over and splatter against the table top like silent gun shots full of repressed emotions. 

“Something different?”

His lips tilt upwards at your question, finally feeling like he was making some progress. 

“Why don’t we start by meeting here every Wednesday to read together and talk about our feelings and then once we’ve both gotten better coping mechanisms we try something more?” 

It doesn’t even take you half a minute to answer him.


End file.
